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The Minneapolis teenager whose cellphone video of George Floyd’s fatal arrest by Derek Chauvin sparked protests around the world began to cry when she was shown a still from the video at the former cop’s murder trial Tuesday.
Prosecutors began their case by calling witnesses to the arrest on May 25, 2020: a Minneapolis 911 dispatcher; a young woman who worked at the gas station across the street; a passing mixed martial arts fighter.
During the first two days of witness testimony, prosecutors have shown jury video taken from multiple angles, including video of Chauvin’s teenager, who is white, pressing his knee against the neck of a dying Floyd, a black man from 46 years. handcuffed, for about nine minutes.
The images, which prosecutors say show excessive force, horrified people around the world and sparked one of the largest protest movements in the United States in decades, with daily marches against disproportionate rates of police violence against blacks.
Attorneys for the 45-year-old Chauvin say he continued his police training and is not guilty of the charges brought by the Minnesota attorney general’s office of second-degree murder, third-degree murder, or second-degree murder.
These are some of the main testimonies the jury heard on Tuesday:
Darnella Frazier, eyewitness
Darnella Frazier, 18, was walking her 9-year-old cousin to buy some snacks at Cup Foods, where a worker had accused Floyd of using a fake $ 20 bill, when she saw police arrest Floyd on the street.
She told jury she saw “a terrified, scared man begging for his life,” so she made sure her cousin was safe inside the store, out of sight, before pulling out her cell phone.
Frazier’s voice trembled as prosecutors snapped a photo of his video, showing the moment Chauvin, with his knee on Floyd’s neck, appears to be looking directly into the lens of Frazier’s camera. He said that Chauvin had “that cold, heartless look.”
Chauvin’s attorneys have said that Chauvin was distracted from Floyd’s “care” by angry passersby who joined Frazier on the sidewalk. Prosecutors asked her if she heard passersby threatening police, and she said no.
“Would they describe themselves as a rebellious mob?” Jerry Blackwell, a prosecutor, asked him.
“No,” Frazier said, adding that the only person he saw being violent was Chauvin, who said he appeared unfazed by onlookers and the traffic passing behind him.
Both parties asked him how the production of the most famous album of Floyd’s death had changed his life, and he spoke again through tears that did not wipe away.
She said:
When I look at George Floyd, I look at my dad, I look at my brothers, I look at my cousins, my uncles, because they are all black. It could have been one of them.
She said she sometimes stayed up late at night thinking about Floyd, apologizing to him for “not saving his life.”
“It’s not what I should have done. It’s what I should have done,” he said, referring to Chauvin. His lawyers objected to his answer.
Minutes later, Frazier’s young cousin, her hair in braids, took her place on the witness stand and said quietly that she recognized Chauvin as the man she saw kneeling over Floyd.
“I was sad and a little angry,” said the girl.
Donald Williams, eyewitness
Donald Williams, a professional mixed martial arts fighter, can be heard in videos of Floyd’s arrest yelling insults at Chauvin and demanding that the police check Floyd’s pulse. He told jurors that he believed Chauvin was using his knee in a “blood choke” on Floyd, a wrestling move to knock an opponent unconscious and a “vibrating” move to increase pressure on the neck of Floyd.
“You can see he’s trying to get some air,” Williams, 33, said of Floyd.
Williams made a 911 call after the arrest was played out. Williams wiped his eyes with a white tissue as his anguished voice filled the courtroom.
“I think I was a witness to a murder,” Williams told the jury. “So I felt like I needed to call the police.”
Chauvin’s lawyers have tried to convince the jury that Chauvin may have felt threatened by passersby.
In a sometimes tense cross-examination, Eric Nelson, Chauvin’s lead attorney, read aloud the insults, some of them obscene, that Williams throws at Chauvin in the video.
“You call him a ‘tough guy’?” Nelson asked, demanding only a “yes” or “no” answer. “You call him a ‘real man’?”
Williams looked away with a slight smile as each insult was read.
“You call him ‘homeless’ at least 13 times?” Nelson continued.
“If that’s what you say in the video,” Williams replied, smiling again, “then that’s what you’ve got: 13.”
